Advent, Yr C, Wk 2; Notre Dame (Walsh Hall)
We love stories
about journeys. Lord of the Rings, the
Hobbit, the Odyssey, The Earthsea books, the Wizard of Oz, Watership Down. Some people even claim that every great story
is at its heart the story of a journey (they’re wrong, but lots of people say
it anyway…). Whether they’re hobbits,
women, girls, men or rabbits, we do love stories about plucky, beyond-all-odds
heroes traversing through all kinds of sticky situations, normally to make it
home, a better person for it. I have a
friend who just put in an audition tape for American Ninja Warrior, and it’s
amazing how many people (including me) will spend hours of our lives watching
people attempt that same short but grueling journey, in the hope that one of
them might make it to the top of Mount Midoriyama. We love these stories, I think, because we
love to imagine ourselves on a journey, to narrativize our lives like
that. In fact, it’s a classic spiritual
practice. You can read books about the
soul’s journey to God by saints like St. Bonaventure, and more recent spiritual
writers, including our own Fr. John Dunne, a Holy Cross priest who taught at
Notre Dame for 55 years.
Seeing
our life as a journey is classic, and I’m not trying to knock it as a story,
but it’s not the only story, and it’s not the Christmas story. It’s not what we find in today’s gospel. Today’s gospel isn’t about our journey, or
even about John the Baptist’s journey.
It’s certainly not about the journey of Pontius Pilate, the ruthless
governor who approved Jesus’ legal murder, or Herod, who built a capital for
himself atop an ancient graveyard, of Tiberius who kicked the Jews out of Rome. No, we hear in our gospel that the Word of
God came to John, son of Zechariah in the desert. The Word of God came. The Word of God journeyed. John didn’t go on some quest to find it; the
Word of God came. John didn’t eat enough
locusts and wear enough camel hair to somehow deserve it; the Word of God came.
The prophetic
quote that Luke gives us isn’t our instructions; it’s an echo of the angelic
work orders, as the master builder barks out instructions to the heavenly host
who work together to straighten paths, level mountains and fill in valleys to
build that royal road with one aim: that the Word of God can come.
That’s
what this part of Advent is for: remembering that that’s happened. And remembering that we don’t need to make
Christmas happen. God’s done that. The Word of God came, and the Word of God
comes. We’ve got a lot of work to do
over the next three weeks, I’m sure.
There’s the small matter of papers to finish, exams to prepare for and
maybe some applications to submit; there’s travel, there’s shopping and
wrapping and decorating and cooking. But
we don’t need to make Christmas happen.
God’s done that.
The Word
of God came, and the Word of God comes.
God’s Word enters our lives powerfully when we hear scripture proclaimed
at Mass, when we proclaim it or sing, when we read it, when we recall a
powerful verse in a moment of weakness, when we enact with our lives. And it makes a difference.
You hear
a lot of people talking about searching for God, and I know what they mean by
that, God’s presence can certainly be hard to discern in a world that can be
cold and scary, but the image discomforts me.
Searching for God is searching for air.
If we weren’t immersed in it, we wouldn’t be able to search at all. We don’t need to search for God as much as we
need to stop and marvel at the wonder that the Word of God came, and be excited
to holiness at what a difference that makes.
It launched
John the Baptist on his preaching circuit around the region of the Jordan,
calling other people to this baptism of repentance, responding God’s presence
but having all the sin washed away that clogs up our throats and makes it
harder to breath the air that God is. In
our reading from Baruch, we hear of the Lord’s presence leading Jerusalem to
cast off the sack cloth she’s robed herself in and receive from God garments of
beauty and honor and glory. That’s how
we prepare for Christmas, and how we prepare for Christ’s eventual second
coming: not by searching for God, but by growing in our amazement that he’s
come, and shedding all that tries to keep him at bay. He’s leveled mountains and raised valleys to
get to us, but he’s too gentle with us to pull away a sin that we still want to
cling to.
And in a
way, that can be its own journey, the journey of repentance, of opening
ourselves up to the mercy of God that surrounds us. And that’s why Pope Francis this week opens
the Year of Mercy, the year to remind us that God stands waiting all that still
separates us. As we prepare for
Christmas in so many other ways, I’d encourage you to think about making a
sacramental confession this Advent, especially if you’ve been away a while. It’s
amazing what glory you might end up clothed with.
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